After due diligence, including a survey of published scientific research and recommendations from our Science Board and our community, we have decided that Graham Hancock’s and Rupert Sheldrake’s talks from TEDxWhitechapel should be removed from distribution on the TEDx YouTube channel.

We’re not censoring the talks. Instead we’re placing them here, where they can be framed to highlight both their provocative ideas and the factual problems with their arguments. See both talks after the jump.

All talks on the TEDxTalks channel represent the opinion of the speaker, not of TED or TEDx, but we feel a responsibility not to provide a platform for talks which appear to have crossed the line into pseudoscience.

According to our science board, Rupert Sheldrake bases his argument on several major factual errors, which undermine the arguments of talk. For example, he suggests that scientists reject the notion that animals have consciousness, despite the fact that it’s generally accepted that animals have some form of consciousness, and there’s much research and literature exploring the idea.

He also argues that scientists have ignored variations in the measurements of natural constants, using as his primary example the dogmatic assumption that a constant must be constant and uses the speed of light as example. But, in truth, there has been a great deal of inquiry into the nature of scientific constants, including published, peer-reviewed research investigating whether certain constants – including the speed of light – might actually vary over time or distance. Scientists are constantly questioning these assumptions. For example, just this year Scientific American published a feature on the state of research into exactly this question. (“Are physical constants really constant?: Do the inner workings of nature change over time?”) Physicist Sean Carroll wrote a careful rebuttal of this point.

In addition, Sheldrake claims to have “evidence” of morphic resonance in crystal formation and rat behavior. The research has never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, despite attempts by other scientists eager to replicate the work.

Response to the TED Scientific Board’s Statement

Rupert Sheldrake
March 18, 2013

I would like to respond to TED’s claims that my TEDx talk “crossed the line into pseudoscience”, contains ”serious factual errors” and makes “many misleading statements.”

This discussion is taking place because the militant atheist bloggers Jerry Coyne and P.Z. Myers denounced me, and attacked TED for giving my talk a platform. I was invited to give my talk as part of a TEDx event in Whitechapel, London, called “Challenging Existing Paradigms.” That’s where the problem lies: my talk explicitly challenges the materialist belief system. It summarized some of the main themes of my recent book Science Set Free (in the UK called The Science Delusion). Unfortunately, the TED administrators have publically aligned themselves with the old paradigm of materialism, which has dominated science since the late nineteenth century.

TED say they removed my talk from their website on the advice of their Scientific Board, who also condemned Graham Hancock’s talk. Hancock and I are now facing anonymous accusations made by a body on whose authority TED relies, on whose advice they act, and behind whom they shelter, but whose names they have not revealed.

TED’s anonymous Scientific Board made three specific accusations:

Accusation 1:“he suggests that scientists reject the notion that animals have consciousness, despite the fact that it’s generally accepted that animals have some form of consciousness, and there’s much research and literature exploring the idea.”

I characterized the materialist dogma as follows: “Matter is unconscious: the whole universe is made up of unconscious matter. There’s no consciousness in stars in galaxies, in planets, in animals, in plants and there ought not to be any in us either, if this theory’s true. So a lot of the philosophy of mind over the last 100 years has been trying to prove that we are not really conscious at all.” Certainly some biologists, including myself, accept that animals are conscious. In August, 2012, a group of scientists came out with an endorsement of animal consciousness in “The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness”. As Discovery News reported, “While it might not sound like much for scientists to declare that many nonhuman animals possess conscious states, it’s the open acknowledgement that’s the big news here.” (http://news.discovery.com/human/genetics/animals-consciousness-mammals-birds-octopus-120824.htm)

But materialist philosophers and scientists are still in the majority, and they argue that consciousness does nothing – it is either an illusion or an ”epiphenomenon” of brain activity. It might as well not exist in animals – or even in humans. That is why in the philosophy of mind, the very existence of consciousness is often called “the hard problem”.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

Accusation 2:“He also argues that scientists have ignored variations in the measurements of natural constants, using as his primary example the dogmatic assumption that a constant must be constant and uses the speed of light as example.… Physicist Sean Carroll wrote a careful rebuttal of this point.”

TED’s Scientific Board refers to a Scientific American article that makes my point very clearly: “Physicists routinely assume that quantities such as the speed of light are constant.”

In my talk I said that the published values of the speed of light dropped by about 20 km/sec between 1928 and 1945. Carroll’s “careful rebuttal” consisted of a table copied from Wikipedia showing the speed of light at different dates, with a gap between 1926 and 1950, omitting the very period I referred to. His other reference (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/speedoflight.html) does indeed give two values for the speed of light in this period, in 1928 and 1932-35, and sure enough, they were 20 and 24km/sec lower than the previous value, and 14 and 18 km/sec lower than the value from 1947 onwards.

1926: 299,798
1928: 299,778
1932-5: 299,774
1947: 299,792

In my talk I suggest how a re-examination of existing data could resolve whether large continuing variations in the Universal Gravitational Constant, G, are merely errors, as usually assumed, or whether they show correlations between different labs that might have important scientific implications hitherto ignored. Jerry Coyne and TED’s Scientific Board regard this as an exercise in pseudoscience. I think their attitude reveals a remarkable lack of curiosity.

Accusation 3:“Sheldrake claims to have “evidence” of morphic resonance in crystal formation and rat behavior. The research has never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, despite attempts by other scientists eager to replicate the work.”

I said, “There is in fact good evidence that new compounds get easier to crystallize all around the world.” For example, turanose, a kind of sugar, was considered to be a liquid for decades, until it first crystallized in the 1920s. Thereafter it formed crystals everyehere. (Woodard and McCrone Journal of Applied Crystallography (1975). 8, 342). The American chemist C. P. Saylor, remarked it was as though “the seeds of crystallization, as dust, were carried upon the winds from end to end of the earth” (quoted by Woodard and McCrone).

The research on rat behavior I referred to was carried out at Harvard and the Universities of Melbourne and Edinburgh and was published in peer-reviewed journals, including the British Journal of Psychology and the Journal of Experimental Biology. For a fuller account and detailed references see Chapter 11 of my book Morphic Resonance (in the US) / A New Science of Life (in the UK). The relevant passage is online here: http://sciencesetfree.tumblr.com/

The TED Scientific Board refers to ”attempts by other scientists eager to replicate the work” on morphic resonance. I would be happy to work with these eager scientists if the Scientific Board can reveal who they are.

This is a good opportunity to correct an oversimplification in my talk. In relation to the dogma that mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works, I said, “that’s why governments only fund mechanistic medicine and ignore complementary and alternative therapies.” This is true of most governments, but the US is a notable exception. The US National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine receives about $130 million a year, about 0.4% of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) total annual budget of $31 billion.

Obviously I could not spell out all the details of my arguments in an 18-minute talk, but TED’s claims that it contains “serious factual errors,” “many misleading statements” and that it crosses the line into “pseudoscience” are defamatory and false.

UPDATE: Please find Graham Hancock’s response below the video window.

HANCOCK Graham Hancock’s talk, again, shares a compelling and unorthodox worldview, but one that strays well beyond the realm of reasonable science. While attempting to critique the scientific worldview, he misrepresents what scientists actually think. He suggests, for example, that no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness.

In addition, Hancock makes statements about psychotropic drugs that seem both nonscientific and reckless. He states as fact that psychotropic drug use is essential for an “emergence into consciousness,” and that one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture. He seems to offer a one-note explanation for how culture arises (drugs), it’s no surprise his work has often been characterized as pseudo-archeology.

TED respects and supports the exploration of unorthodox ideas, but the many misleading statements in both Sheldrake’s and Hancock’s talks, whether made deliberately or in error, have led our scientific advisors to conclude that our name and platform should not be associated with these talks.

Response to the TED Scientific Board’s Statement

Graham Hancock
March 18, 2013

(1) TED says of my “War on Consciousness” presentation: “…he misrepresents what scientists actually think. He suggests, for example, that no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness.”

The only passage I can find in my presentation that has any relevance at all to this allegation is between 9 mins 50 seconds and 11 mins 12 seconds. But nowhere in that passage or anywhere else in my presentation do I make the suggestion you attribute to me in your allegation, namely that “no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness.” Rather I address the mystery of life after death and state that “if we want to know about this mystery the last people we should ask are materialist, reductionist scientists. They have nothing to say on the matter at all.” That statement cannot possibly be construed as my suggesting that “no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness,” or of “misrepresenting” what materialist, reductionist scientists actually think. I am simply stating the fact, surely not controversial, that materialist, reductionist scientists have nothing to say on the matter of life after death because their paradigm does not allow them to believe in the possibility of life after death; they believe rather that nothing follows death. Here is the full transcript of what I say in my presentation between 9 mins 50 seconds and 11 mins 12 seconds: “What is death? Our materialist science reduces everything to matter. Materialist science in the West says that we are just meat, we’re just our bodies, so when the brain is dead that’s the end of consciousness. There is no life after death. There is no soul. We just rot and are gone. But actually any honest scientist should admit that consciousness is the greatest mystery of science and that we don’t know exactly how it works. The brain’s involved in it in some way, but we’re not sure how. Could be that the brain generates consciousness the way a generator makes electricity. If you hold to that paradigm then of course you can’t believe in life after death. When the generator’s broken consciousness is gone. But it’s equally possible that the relationship – and nothing in neuroscience rules it out – that the relationship is more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set and in that case when the TV set is broken of course the TV signal continues and this is the paradigm of all spiritual traditions – that we are immortal souls, temporarily incarnated in these physical forms to learn and to grow and to develop. And really if we want to know about this mystery the last people we should ask are materialist, reductionist scientists. They have nothing to say on the matter at all. Let’s go rather to the ancient Egyptians who put their best minds to work for three thousand years on the problem of death and on the problem of how we should live our lives to prepare for what we will confront after death…”

I profoundly disagree. In my presentation I speak honestly and openly about my own damaging and destructive 24-year cannabis habit and about how experiences under the influence of Ayahuasca were the key to breaking this habit. I also say ( 3 min 46 seconds to 3 min 50 seconds) that “I don’t think any of the psychedelics should be used for recreation.”

(3) TED says of my presentation: “He states as fact that psychotropic drug use is essential for an “emergence into consciousness,” and that one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture.”

Nowhere in my talk do I state as a fact that psychotropic drug use is “essential” for an “emergence into consciousness.” Nowhere in my talk do I state that “one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture.”

I refute this. What I say (between 1 min 06 seconds and 1 min 54 seconds) is that some scientists in the last thirty years have raised an intriguing possibility — emphasis on POSSIBILITY — which is that the exploration of altered states of consciousness, in which psychedelic plants have been implicated, was fundamental to the emergence into fully symbolic consciousness witnessed by the great cave art.

(5) TED says of my “War on Consciousness” presentation: “… it’s no surprise his work has often been characterized as pseudo-archeology.”

Of what possible relevance is this remark? Many different people have characterised my work in many different ways but at issue here is not what people have said about my work over the years but the actual content of this specific TEDx presentation.

We’ve been reviewing the response this past weekend to our decision to move two TEDx talks off the TEDx YouTube channel and over here onto the main TED Blog. We’d like to recap here what happened and suggest a way forward. UPDATE: To discuss the talks, view them here: The debate about Rupert Sheldrake’s talk […]

At TEDxWhitechapel on January 13, 2013, Rupert Sheldrake gave a provocative talk in which he suggests that modern science is based on ten dogmas, and makes the case that none of them hold up to scrutiny. According to him, these dogmas — including, for example, that nature is mechanical and purposeless, that the laws and […]

Conference theme: Magic, loosely defined, is the attempt to engage with the world through the imagination or psyche, in order to obtain some form of knowledge, benefit or advantage. Celestial magic engages with the cosmos through stellar, planetary or celestial symbolism, influences or intelligences. This academic conference will explore the history, philosophy and practice of astral magic.

pseudoscience is a buzzword latched onto by the cynical (not critical) thinking reductionists – It’s the modernist reductionist word for “blasphemy”! it is used for everything that scares them personally then they pretend its for rational external reasons….same pattern coming around again, shame on TED and sad that each time we (humanity) step forward there are those that put a flag down and say this is it, this is the final reality, anybody else is a heathen, kill them, destroy them, defame them….they are creating the same world that their fore-bearers fought so hard to overcome, they have become the new priesthood. Seriously shame on you you TED. you let some scientific fundamentalists control the boundary of the reality you are allowing to be expressed. Shame on you. Terrible.

Jim, I have been wanting to let you know some things. I believe I have come to get more of a glimpse of maybe how it has come to this. The bar you speak of that is lowered does not describe for me the quality of human curiosity, but a dogma, a modus-operandi from a pre-set universe of ideals, a world-view, a paradigm that dictates our survival, all nicely walled in like a castle so as to ensure its continuity. It feels good there, its nice and solid, its real and true. What you describe as the bar lowering only occurs in one´s OWN world view. In reality, something much more complex from anything even Hawkings could ever describe occurs. For example, science explains the behavior of particles at microscopic levels yet fails to describe the larger organization of these arrays by many orders of magnitude, without even factoring in the many variations within these arrays and their effects on all multiple frequencies simultaneously, also the huge mystery beyond evolution: that of the interaction of the universe with life, etc. So many discoveries still. In reality there is no bar being lowered by these talks, au contrair, the bar is being discussed more and more! When else does that happen? Sheldrake´s and Hancock´s talks went beautifully together, almost as an artistic assemblage. There is much, much more to discover and we need all the good ideas and tools necessary to find them. All intelligently thought out leads are good on such platforms indeed. Only fools come up with reasons not to do so. Sheldrake´s talk is amazing. Hancock shows us an already very well established “amazing curiosity” that is ayahuasca. A black hole of mystery in human experience but described as some sort of external “contact”. Now, who sees something wrong with this picture? Am I being irresponsible for saying there is a difference between heroin and ayahuasca? or pot and ayahuasca? or by getting into a pharmaceutical or toxicological discussion? No, we are encouraged by the attitude to be aware of what is out there. Maybe TED is supposed to be for all ages so censors all 18+ discussions? What would an 8 year old, considering he has the attention span to listen to such a talk, what would he think of them? How about a 13 year old? Would it really be that bad considering everything else they are exposed to, particularly today? Are these talks really that bad? why? Do you feel uncomfortable being questioned? Sorry TED, I was just following your teachings/attitude of questioning and sharing. I know how hard this is for you, I still love you. If you laughed right there, you are a sociopath :P

Some may find particular leads to try and explain reality further as pointless. I would say they should reserve the intense criticism for the ridiculous time wasting kind of stupid leads leading nowhere. Hancock is pointing towards a very interesting yet unconventional lead where one can learn about the universe and mind, also the relation between them, if any. I seriously fail to see a bad picture here. Sorry. We must let cultures and diversities of thought find their way, do not hinder speech, or thought or “interesting curiosities”, (even if they are your neighbors´ [whatever, I don´t know]). It is not wise. The search for reality must be unimpeded of all censorship, and it is a universal crime to quash discovery in my book. TED does what they want, as long as they know the consequences of their actions, I will support their overall contribution; although I have no idea they do or do not know the consequences of their actions. I dare not ask them. Jim…

So ya think I’m part of “a world-view, a paradigm that dictates our survival, all nicely walled in like a castle so as to ensure its continuity. It feels good there, its nice and solid, its real and true. ”

I flout science at every turn. How many of my writings would you care to see!
Gravity

Original work
Jim Ryan
Supported by evidence

Look to the space junk that NASA wants to possibly incinerate in space. It must be tin a high orbit not to fall back to earth. That suggests that gravity is keeping it there, unlike space junk that is in lower orbits, eventually falling back to earth according to science. There are two forces in gravity, one is attraction and one is repulsion. I will explain. The planets must sit in the suns high orbits, considering their mass, keeping them from falling into the sun, just as the space junk does not fall back to earth from its high orbit around the earth.

Moons reflectors bogus

Original work
By Jim Ryan
Supported by evidence

So, the moons reflectors are 239,000 miles from earth, approximately and since the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, y’all must think that laser beam will get back to earth pretty fast. Actually, the light should return to earth from the moons reflectors in 1.3 seconds, with the reflectors designed to reflect the light back to the point it came from.

However, in the 1.3 seconds the light takes to return to its origin, the earth has moved approx 4,000 miles from the point source of light, according to sciences claim that our galaxy is traveling that fast in 1 second, making it impossible for science to capture any photons, at least according to science.

Science sure is messed up, thinking it can collect photons that are 4,000 miles behind the collector.

Just another contradiction from those that control science. According to the following web page, there is no way science can gather even one photon from the laser light. In the 2.6 seconds the light is suspended between planets, the earth has moved more than 4,000 +miles. As the light beam broke into individual photons in that time, according to science—- even when science cannot prove even that, according to what science claims. I don’t know how science can be so stupid.

Before jumping to conclusions, I am sure there must be a scientific explanation. Perhaps the light does move with the local reference frame. After all, when I though a ball in the air, or a satellite into space, they are clearly moving with the Earth.

Important to get your facts straight. I just watched a docu about ayahuasca by Alberto Vildoldo. According to that docu, the ayahuasca is the vine, and the leaves of the plant make uptake of DMT possible. There seems to be a lot of bad ayahuasca around, sold in the marketplaces. Apparently it is very important to do the ceremony with a good shaman. That said i am very doubtful whether western people should engage in these kind of ceremonies, unless personally called by a shaman. Often it becomes just the newest hype, is psychologically very unhealthy, when a western person has just done a training in this kind of spirituality, ceremonies. Personally i have been told the greatest rubbish, during a ceremony like that by a western woman. A shaman becomes a shaman when called by Spirit, often after having gone through intense personal crisises. It is not something one can train to become. I strongly believe our western societies have their own ways of making some people into our western shamans. Adopting an alien culture will hardly ever lead to an integrated shamanic experience. We cannot play to be indians or peruvian shamans. Making new neural pathways takes 10.000 hours each to form myelination so it will remain stable. Having your brain flooded with neurotransmitters, may be healing if done in a controlled environment, if a person needs healing. Just partaking in ceremonies takes us more outside or our authentic selves, often making us into a whole new kind of addicts, of whatever meme goes around.

I consider it a great shame that a forum, a community set up to stimulate ideas and discussion has relied on its experts to shut out a most provocatie piece. Bureaucracy enters another land of safe, lock it down, don’t touch us environments. Sad

I suppose TED is within their rights to censor a talk that they make available, but this diminishes you as an organization. What is it that you fear in these ideas? I think Hancock’s subject (psychotropic drugs) is more the problem than what he’s actually saying. You need to stop thinking that you already know everything. This has been science’s problem for centuries. Science knows or believes it can explain quite a lot, but only within its own accepted parameters. Leave room for the future. One hundred years from now, learned people will find your quaint notions laughable.

All Hancock said was that certain chemical compounds may have been responsible for triggering human conscious. He did not advocate recreational drug use. Personally, I don’t see anything threatening in that idea.

TED used to be an intellectual haven for me. Something very rare on the internet untouched by agendas and dogmas; a healthy place to expand your mind. Free of ignorance. Now I find out they too are censoring subjects because it challenges a set belief system of a board member. TED is turning into an organization that they tried to break free from.

Isn’t that how its always been? The children rebel until they become the shackled? Organizations pretend to break the mold, until they have gained recognition and then like children, they fall in line or they are brought down hard.

When anyone on any board shows they are much better thinkers, many of the rest hate him or her and do their best to drag him her down, oust him or her by various means or ignore them.

You all create what you hate and then you deny it. The heads of state and major corporations went to school just like you, they have the same petty jealousies if not more, but they have others do their dirty work for them.

Ted will rise no further than the people like you allow. Yes, it’s always someone else’s fault.

Perhaps Rus, but then did Ted mean to create this fiasco? I don’t think so. Like so many others, they had good intentions and high ideals—dontcha think?
With recognition comes competition. Who is Ted starting to compete with?
Who at this point has more recognition and power Rus, 60 minutes, 20/20, all the major news orgs or Ted?

If Ted were allowed to push the boundaries, how long before Ted surpassed all the others?
Yea, I’m plenty angry at how Ted has censored me, but hey, the world ain’t fair. Ted is caught in the middle, just like Hancock and Sheldrake.

It is our petty jealousies that are to blame. We as jealous little people, demean and hold back our society, because we can’t see the forest for the trees.

TEDxWhitechapel was working outside the TED box, merely by honesty and thus by accident. TEDx was bound to display the TED box. TED wants to glorify the box, and have all their viewers see how wonderful things are inside. Thus, they could not abide by the taboo thinking that motivated TEDxWhitechapel. In the arrogance of their ism, we can see that after all this time since the censorship, they still cannot venture outside, and thought that they could justify what they have done. It’s like a cult of close-minded people who have drunk the scientism kool aid. It may very well be, and seems to be, that we now know what TED has always known, that the TED talks have been a tool for their ideology.

When worlds collide: Over the past couple of years I have enjoyed and been stimulated and encouraged about the progressive of humanity (and it’s consciousness) through TED talks whilst at the same time also seeking out what have been labelled ‘alternative’ views by many Professionals which have included Sheldrake and Hancock (among many).

My heart leaped when I heard that these 2 had been given a platform by TED, it was no less than I expected from what I considered to be such a free-thinking organisation. Indeed I thought that the views of these 2 learned gentlemen were ‘ideas worth spreading’.

The surge in emotion felt by this was soon quashed and stamped upon by TED’s subsequent actions. I am no longer excited by and anticipate the next round of TED talks dropping into my inbox – I just feel that anything they have to offer has been stamped as acceptable for me – as a minion – to assimilate.

I have a comprehensive high school education but am not as dumb as TED would like me to believe that I am. You are dumber than I am if you for a moment believed that banning these talks would make them go away instead of the old adage of there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Behave yourself TED – reorganise your board (if you can!) to include some free thinking Scientists. They’re not as clever as they think if they didn’t “get” some of the concepts that Sheldrake and Hancock tried to convey in their talks. All they have done is prove that their theories have some basis in truth.